First off, I was a bit irritated by the implausibility of the characters' transformations from civilized girls to wild women. After reading The Omnivores Dilemma just a couple months ago, it was hard not to scoff at, say, the pig-hunting episode, or the "I'm gonna teach myself how to shoot a rifle today!" episode, or the ease with which the girls begin identifying edible plants in their yard with nothing but the help of a poorly illustrated field guide.

But the real death knell for me were the feminist themes that start as subtle overtones and evolve into heavy-handed garbledygoop. ("She wondered what was worse: a bear or a man." Ugh.) This is particularly frustrating because, in order to imagine her feminist pagan utopia, Hegland feels the need to "evolve" the sisters along traditional gender lines, with one receding into the standard female role while the other 'rises' to the occasion to become the provider, hunter, problem solver.

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